We report the discovery of an accreting supermassive black hole at
FRB 121102 is the first fast radio burst to be spatially associated with a persistent radio source (QRS 121102), the nature of which remains unknown. We constrain the physical size of QRS 121102 by measuring its flux-density variability with the VLA from 12 to 26 GHz. Any such variability would likely be due to Galactic refractive scintillation and would require the source radius to be ≲1017cm at the host-galaxy redshift. We found the radio variability to be lower than the scintillation theory predictions for such a small source, leaving open the possibility for non-AGN models for QRS 121102. In addition, we roughly estimated the mass of any potential supermassive black hole (BH) associated with QRS 121102 from the line width of the host-galaxy H
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10476014
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 958
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 185
- Size(s):
- ["Article No. 185"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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